


sing me (as days go by)

by reflectionslie (fallsink)



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Character Study, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Relationship Study, Singing Competition, nondescriptive sexytimes, the teeniest got7 cameo if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 20:53:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19048195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallsink/pseuds/reflectionslie
Summary: The rules of the show are simple. Sungjin’s never cared for all of them, no one really does. Only for the last two:14. Contestants must never remove their masks or reveal themselves to the audience or other participants until they are eliminated.15. Failure to abide by Rule #14 is basis for immediate disqualification.(or: Sungjin’s return back to music and maybe back to Younghyun too.)





	sing me (as days go by)

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [day6_ficfest](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/day6_ficfest) collection. 



> I changed a little (a lot) of the prompt, but hope you like it! 
> 
> EDIT (7/7): huge kudoes to my friend LA for giving vocal tips and beta-ing

It’s all a stretch of blinding white and the noise around them is beyond deafening. Thunderous, disarming, chaotic. All Sungjin knows is that he’s standing right here, on the stage, staring so hard at his partner, challenging, _daring_ him to do the same. 

He doesn’t hear the disqualifying buzzer over the noise, doesn’t even hear the audience roaring around him, all he knows is that his partner isn’t revealing himself.

 

* * *

 

The rules of Your Voice are simple, all fifteen points. Sungjin’s never cared for all of them, no one really does. Except for the last two:

  1. Contestants must never remove their masks or reveal themselves to the audience or other participants until they are eliminated.
  2. Failure to abide by Rule #14 is basis for immediate disqualification. 



He never cares for them, the TV or even the show itself, even after his housemate and college friend Wonpil becomes a religious fan, following after every episode like a sunflower after the lights of the stage.

Even when Jaehyung, another childhood friend joins this season’s judge roster, calls him about it, Sungjin lies about having too much work at the firm before changing the subject. Only when Wonpil begs him to join because they are one contestant short does Sungjin consider it.

He never cared for it all, especially after he had given up music. 

When Wonpil asks for the last time before the deadline, across morning coffee and toast, Sungjin fumbles in his pockets to avoid answering. The scar on his cheek from a childhood accident had faded years ago, but he hasn’t stopped running his nails over it. A force of habit, muscle memory from countless times before.

A tap on his shoulder and it’s Dowoon, Wonpil’s best friend, their next door neighbor. He holds out a stick of spearmint gum and Wonpil adds, “Just consider it, please” before they leave together for work at the nearby middle school. Sungjin takes both in resignation.

He submits his application online a few hours later, barely makes the cutoff, tells them that he has nothing to lose. Doesn’t say that something inside is still aching and yearning and he knows the stage will ease it, if only for a little while.

 

* * *

 

Once he passes the preliminaries and the first round of auditions, he withdraws from all contact with other contestants during the two weeks that they are staying at the recording building. Last to arrive for meetings, first to leave, first to lock himself in the hotel room, last to sleep. He’s not here to network or make friends, especially if their friendship is based on competition. 

Only when the opening night mic check comes around does he let himself be present and soak in the experience of making it to the final rounds. 

Sungjin had done his research during his initial preparations and of the three judges, he only cares for one – Jaehyung. Jimin is sharp-tongued and never has anything nice to say, her stinging words second only to the steel in her eyes. Matthew is too nice, and his comments are hardly ever things contestants could work on. 

Regardless, he leaves his stack of accounting papers in the hotel room, disconnects his earbuds. Allows himself a few moments to peek through the heavy velvet curtains at the other seven contestants before him who have now made the cut.

Even if Your Voice is marketed as a “live show,” few people know that judges actually hear parts of a contestant’s performance before the cameras whirl into action. They are singers after all, and singers must warm up. 

You can learn a lot from a performer when they’re in the middle of a performance. How they deal with stress, with the spotlight, with everyone’s eyes on them. But their actions during warm-ups are far more telling of who they are as a person, as an artist.

They are all wearing identical black plastic masks before they are given their new identities that the audiences will know them by. Everyone is given ten to fifteen seconds to try out their song of choice and as long as the speakers doesn’t return with feedback, the candidates are dismissed.

Before and after his test, Sungin is keeping mental notes on each one but is soon bored, no one interesting enough to hold his attention. He considers leaving.

Then the last participant – a tall man with broad shoulders – steps up to the mic, thanks the stagehand in a warm lilting tone as he adjusts the mic stand. 

The young man takes a breath, swallows visibly, and begins the first couple notes of his song. As soon as the sound reached his ears, Sungjin is enamored, at a _complete_ loss of words or thought. A total blank at the gorgeous voice that caresses the music and somewhere between the nails and skin.

But most of all, he knows that voice. Knows that control and pitch, even if it's seven years older, seven years more defined.

He doesn’t hear Jimin’s or Matthew’s comments, only pieces of Jaehyung telling him he shouldn’t be nervous, to not sing down, to tilt his head back to let his voice carry.

The only clear in his mind is how he knows that voice, still knows it because it isn’t different from the core of someone who had once meant so much to him. 

(Or still does, if he is honest with himself. 

But as of late, as he closes his eyes against the flickering lights, he has been very good at lying to himself.)

 

* * *

 

Later the next day, back in the solitude of his hotel room, he takes in his new appearance in the foggy bathroom mirror. Focusing on the now sunflower-blonde locks, recently bleached for this occasion, tugs on them from his eyelashes.

He may be masked for this most of the time, but should he lose, he will be revealed to everyone today. Should he win, he will still be seen, so he must keep his image. 

As he thinks of this expectation in disdain, his own voice and a conversation from years far past echoes back.

_“It should just be about the song, the soul…”_

_Soft laughter amongst snipping of scissors. A warm press of lips against his right temple._

_“It’s never just about the music.”_

At this, he shakes his head hard, muttering, “Can’t be possible.” Dislodges the memory, shaking it away. It’s been years ( _seven_ , his mind supplies), it should be gone, over. But he can’t shake the rattle of something still broken, still unmended inside.

 

* * *

 

But it thoroughly is possible, the more Sungjin thinks about it. 

He and Jaehyung had fallen out of contact just before starting at their different colleges – Sungjin for accounting and Jaehyung for music production. It’s been seven years since he’s last seen or heard from Younghyun, his other childhood best friend and high school sweetheart.

They were together, first as friends, through so many of each other’s milestones – first lost baby tooth, first bike ride, first friend group dramas, first voice changes. 

To Sungjin, though, all miles would forever be measured against the day when his drunkard father threw him out. Younghyun was there with the getaway car, kneeling in front of him in the only dingy motel that would allow minors to rent a room. Kneeling against the ragged mattress, his expression closer to seventy than seventeen, cleaning the cut on Sungjin’s cheek, apologizing that it would probably scar.

They were together, first as friends then as lovers, through so many of each other’s milestones – first lost baby tooth, first bike ride, first friend group dramas, first voice changes. First kiss. 

Sungjin doesn’t want to think about how quick and effortless it had been, kissing him senseless against the wooden headboard then – letting Younghyun _love_ him senseless, so he thinks instead of how it all makes sense now.

Jaehyung went to the same college Younghyun did in the States for music theory, so they must’ve stayed close friends. And the insistence from Wonpil and Jaehyung to join this season, even Dowoon.

 _But,_ he thinks, knuckles white against the bathroom counter, _what are they hoping to accomplish?_ It’s all over, there’s a reason why they don’t talk anymore, aren’t in each other’s lives anymore.

Even if Sungjin doesn’t remember what the emotion behind the reason was, or if he really even believes in it anymore.

 

* * *

 

A few days pass then the first round begins.

Sungjin takes on the mask of Bear and breezes through his song, tripping over one chord, far more intent on identifying the one person his thoughts all have been leading to as of late.

The instant Fox steps up onstage, Sungjin knows. But he isn’t prepared for when he starts to sing. Fox – Younghyun – had been holding back in his sound check. From the moment his clear voice glides over the first two notes, everyone is hooked, line and sinker.

It’s an English song, Sungjin doesn’t know enough of the language to even guess its exact words, but there is no mistaking its meaning, the undercurrent nuances. 

_Not all of it is right, but just that we don’t talk anymore._

To him, there is no question or disbelief anywhere in his mind of who this must be.

As the judges make their choices, there is a break. Sungjin is still lost, ears still full of that captivating voice, that he catches himself wondering as they split off, if there even _is_ someone for Younghyun, and if they’re loving him right.

 

* * *

 

The judges finalize their choices and sixteen shrinks to eight.

Both of them make it to Round Two, though Sungjin is more surprised for himself than for Younghyun. But he finds that his opponent, a female under the Cat mask, has completely broken under the pressure. She is escorted, with little ceremony, from the stage and show.

The theme for this round is “memories,” contestants are given three hours, encouraged to choose a song that “evokes meaning and memory” as Matthew suggests. Sungjin doesn't know why he doesn’t hesitate to call Wonpil, asking him to dig up the old composition books. Is honestly taken aback that he manages to find an old song written years ago.

Even though there are only four, there are still many to go through in an hour’s time, so they really only get to sing for about forty-five seconds. So he steps up to the mic now, vibrating from the latent energy in the audience and space, loses himself to the music and the memories of a simpler time when they were young. 

To when destiny could not stop them, when lifespan is just a number.

“ _I will always wait for you, right here_ ,” he pours into the mic, lets every emotion dig its nails into the notes for the hope that they can be conveyed and heard. “ _Please don't forget me, so that we can feel each other. Remember me, so that we can last forever_.”

He wins against Frog who attempts a song outside of his range but cracks his voice over the highest two notes. 

Then it’s Younghyun against Dog, who goes first with a heavy R&B song that doesn’t suit his opera-style background. 

Younghyun picks a Korean song this time and it still punches Sungjin in the gut, winds him as if it had physical weight. It’s a bittersweet song about remembering all of the happy memories, of how they feel like a dream, but now of having no more left, leaving it all in the past.

There are still many to go through, so they really only got to sing for about forty-five seconds, but god, Younghyun is making it feel like both minutes and hours.

 

* * *

 

Before he knows it, it’s the final round with only Sungjin and Younghyun left, the others having given up or been dismissed for some reason or another.

The judges choose the song. Sungjin doesn’t know it, neither do Wonpil and Dowoon when he asks them. He wonders how the judges chose it, but doesn’t question it. Doesn’t let himself feel the pangs of the words that feel too close for comfort.

 

* * *

 

Jaehyung comes in without knocking, closing the dressing room door behind him, and Sungjin is only surprised that it hasn’t happened sooner.

“I thought judges aren’t allowed in the back with contestants,” Sungjin says, throwing a small smirk over his shoulder as he rolls up his dress shirt sleeves.

“I have my ways,” Jaehyung laughs, shaking his head and leans against the doorframe. “But I’m not here as a judge, I’m here as a friend...” His voice trails off as his gaze drops on an unopened envelope on the table. Surprise is splattered across his features when he picks it up and asks, with his eyes, “Is this...?”

Nodding, Sungjin turns back to the mirror, adjusts his collar, blinks against the lights. “Came in the mail, haven’t read it.” But both of them know what it is. Only one thing could come to a contestant with the Seven Wings Agency seal. 

Sungjin can feel his friend’s eyes dragging over his back with questions, comments, anything, before, “You ready?” 

“Of course,” Sungjin replies, pausing to brush Jaehyung’s elbow as he passes by the other while he squeezes his shoulder, both smiling – all gestures of reassurance to each other, but for completely different things and reasons.

Jaehyung walks out first and Sungjin hesitates before turning off the lights, before letting his fingers brushing over the block letters of the offer he knows he won’t take.

 

* * *

 

Suddenly, Sungjin is there. The world might be holding its breath, but Sungjin certainly is, already sweating beneath the spotlights and mask.

He still knows the lyrics by heart, how to carry out the music. But somehow, standing here facing the fox-masked person he _knows_ with his whole being is Younghyun, it makes something break.

Younghyun follows the first few notes of the song thrumming through the speakers, takes a breath deep from his diaphragm and starts, “ _I hate our memories, after losing you everything is meaningless to me_.”

Even with all his preparation, even after hearing this voice so many times, Sungjin still almost misses his entrance. 

“ _I don't miss you, don't want to see you_ .” The words set so wrong in the crevices of his mouth, tastes like rusty metal left too long in the rain. “ _I don't want to remember the love you gave me_.” He sings, doesn’t mean it. Doesn’t mean any of it.

Seamlessly, effortlessly, perfectly, Younghyun follows behind. “ _I sound like a fool, but my world has stopped from the moment I left you_.”

Sungjin really tastes rust now, definitely broken the skin, but he sings, on time, “ _I loved you, I loved you too much_ .” It’s not his mask, but he’s suffocating in his own head. _“I can't let go of you so now I have to forget_.” 

Every note is so clear and crisp, ringing through even to the furthest rafters, though Sungjin’s veins. “ _I want to hate you, 'cause I hate that I can't hate you at all_.”

The last deafening note resonates through the auditorium, echoing almost painfully in the following silence.

This – the entirety of this one moment – is everything an artist dreams of. Most people believe that you want applause after finishing a piece. 

But there’s something better, far better – an audience so stunned they forget to clap. A beat, two, then maybe a hundred, pass before brains catch up with hands to devolve into all-consuming cheering. 

In that breath of an instant before the applause starts, Sungjin decides.

All he remembers thinking before he does is: when was the last time he’d actually fought for something he believed in? And what was it about being here with Younghyun that makes him feel something besides the intense apathy he had been plagued with since he gave up? Life, music, love?

The mask doesn’t come off easy and scratches his cheek over the old scar as he tugs it off, the fabric now digging deep into his palms.

It’s all suddenly a stretch of blinding white and the noise around him without the barrier is beyond deafening. Thunderous, disarming, chaotic. 

All Sungjin knows is that he’s standing right here, stunned, on the world’s stage, staring so hard through his sweat-soaked bleached hair at his partner. Challenging, _daring_ him to do the same. 

He doesn’t hear the disqualifying buzzer over the noise, doesn’t even hear the audience roaring around them. All he knows now is that Younghyun isn’t revealing himself.

 

* * *

 

The last time Sungjin had seen Younghyun, it was similar to this. Full of adrenaline and completely breathless, but in a different, more terrible way.

There are papers all over the floor but the mess could not close the distance between them. The fragments of accusations ( _truths_ , if Sungjin was honest to himself) splattered across the floor amongst the raindrops from the window that they didn’t close.

This is their apartment and they’ve stopped motel-hopping, but Younghyun has that expression again that’s far closer to end of ninety than barely nineteen, pain scarring his beautiful face in ways only seen by the heart, said,

“It’s only ever been music for you. How naive of me to believe that it could ever be anything else.”

In all of the replays of that moment, then to now, Sungjin has never figured out what he should’ve said then, _done_ then.

Maybe crossed the distance to hug Younghyun tight then, saying that he was right, that he should’ve been a better partner; or maybe yell back that Younghyun was wrong, that music wasn’t the only thing for him, not then or ever; Or at least maybe tell Younghyun that he didn’t want him hurting so much, that he couldn’t bear being the one making Younghyun hurt, because Sungjin loved him so, so much, still.

But he doesn’t do or say any of those things.

He just watches Younghyun – in that moment, over and over again in his mind’s eye – watches Younghyun leave, only the residual words and bitter silence ringing in his ear long after he closes the apartment door.

 

* * *

 

Jaehyung and Dowoon visit the house sometimes, but Wonpil always shakes his head and they let him be.

The last time Sungjin had seen Younghyun, it had been followed by months and months of numbness before breaking from it to throw himself into getting into school, classes, internships, jobs. Wonpil said that he was channeling his pain into his work instead of facing it, but Sungjin doesn’t listen.

But this time is somehow so much worse, because it _hurts_. A hundred scalding showers but the feeling won’t leave him, the grief leaving him, shaking even underneath blankets.

He shaves his head one night and he could lie and say that it’s rebellion or whim, but he knows better. Is,at least, finally honest with himself.

_“Why do I need to cut my hair?” Sungjin is protesting, though not nearly as strongly as he feels as he’s eased down into a chair. “Buy new clothes? We should save…”_

_“It’s about the look,” Younghyun replies patiently, draping a cloth around his shoulder, tests the scissors a few times, “the aesthetic. Look the part of a singer.”_

_“It should just be about the song, the soul…” Sungjin grumbles as Younghyun brushes some locks into his eyes and gently pushes his head forward._

_Soft laughter amongst snipping of scissors. A warm press of lips against his right temple._

_“It’s never just about the music.”_

 

* * *

 

Time passes, it could be days, months, millennia, Sungjin doesn’t know.

Sungjin is alone sometime after the show wraps up, according to his friends. He feels like a revolving door of bed - work - bed, with basic necessities here and there. Only eats enough to keep Wonpil from fretting too much.

He’s standing halfway between his room and the front lobby, still furiously trying to rub warmth into his skin under his long sleeves, when there’s a knock at the front door. Dowoon doesn’t ever knock and Jaehyung always does, but only three times. Sungjin ignores it.

But it doesn’t stop so he stomps over, fumbles over the lock, tugs it open, ready to say something-

The afternoon almost blinds him from high above in the same way the spotlight does and Sungjin blinks, winces, his arm reflexively jerking up to shield his eyes.

Long fingers reach out to brush at his cheek, right over the scar, and Sungjin knows that Younghyun’s mind is catching up too late to realize that it’s a faded mark now. A muscle memory from so many times before.

Rather than “It doesn’t hurt anymore” or “You still remember,” Sungjin watches him withdraw, murmurs instead, “You’re here.” 

(Doesn’t say, “You found me.”) 

Younghyun nods, hesitant, and holds up a letter, addressed to here, to him. The offer letter. With everything that’s happened, Sungjin only vaguely remembers wondering if he had taken the envelope with him.

Clearly not. 

But he isn’t thinking about how it ended up with Younghyun in the first place because he notices that the younger is also carrying a bouquet of flowers – pale purple with white fillers. Sungjin doesn’t know why, doesn’t think there’s any real significance, but he starts counting them anyway. _One, two, three, four, fi..._

“You gave up guitar?”

“Doesn’t sell.” Without looking up, still tallying. 

_...fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seven…_

“Found anything good?” 

Sungjin still hasn’t torn his eyes away, still counting, but still hears the way the words form and hang in the air. Like Younghyun is asking something else.

 _...twenty-four…_ “Songs? No.” Sungjin wishes that he could be honest then. Just sincerely say that as of late, they’ve been notes on a piano, less like melodies and more like memories, and memories that aren’t just his.

“Oh.” Younghyun takes his time surveying the lobby into the open door of Sungjin’s room, looking around into every corner, sees the strewn stacks of papers with numbers and words. Not music. “You’ve kept busy.”

“It pays the bills, had to grow up. And I had to move on.” Those were explanations, reasons enough, so Sungjin doesn’t know why he continues, but he does. “You were always the one who had the hardest time moving on.”

“I had the hardest time letting go,” Younghyun agrees, nodding, running a finger down his own nose. It’s such a small inconsequential movement, but to Sungjin, it is full of meaning, full of memory, it brings him back.

Back to when they spent their nights in shitty motel rooms while they were busking in the Seoul streets, staying only at most a week in each place. It only lasted a few months.

Sungjin remembers this, or at least echoes of it, that one night, near the end of their motel-hopping but not the end of playing on the streets, having this conversation. 

Lying across each other in the bed, too hot to be under blankets, Younghyun says, across flattened pillows, “I’m going to miss this place.”

“Why?”

“I get attached easily.” Younghyun shrugs his shoulder against the mattress, dipping it, before turning onto his back to talk to the ceiling. “When it’s time to leave, I always get… sad.”

Sungjin doesn’t reply, just watches Younghyun’s eyelashes flutter closed, falls asleep to the outline of his profile, grounded by their entwined fingers.

The next day they search for houses that they can’t afford, in neighborhoods clearly not meant for them. But it doesn’t matter, because it makes Younghyun smile.

When Younghyun gets keys to a small studio apartment for them both, Sungjin doesn’t question it, just goes online to buy cheap furniture, but not before kissing the hell out of Younghyun against the motel’s plaster wall (the last motel’s plaster wall). Continues on with the beaming smiles left behind like residual lipstick on his mouth.

Maybe Sungjin got tired too of moving so much. Or maybe he didn’t want Younghyun to be sad about places anymore, to just have somewhere to come back to, not just into his arms. Or maybe it was something else.

But it doesn’t matter, not anymore.

 

(Still thinking what he thought then – how there’s just too much empty space, in this room, inside his body, in everything he does. Just intense apathy and vast stretches of white with no beginning or end.

How after Younghyun had left the apartment it became haunted. Not just by something that had once been alive, but also by something that had never really lived.

“ _It’s only ever been music for you, how naive of me to believe that it could ever be anything else..._ ”)

 

“That song we sang,” Younghyun says, breaking into his thoughts. He pauses, looks at Sungjin, _really_ looks at him before continuing, “I… I wrote it about you.”

Sungjin’s throat tightens and he might be holding his breath. “What’s it called?”

“I loved you.”

“I loved you too.” This time it comes to Sungjin’s lips before he can stop it.

But no, even that isn’t true. Sungjin’s done a lot of things, a lot of which he regrets, but he never, he _could_ never lie to Younghyun, so he amends, “I love you, still.”

The bouquet suddenly falls and bursts open against the wooden floor like a firework made of purple petals. But Sungjin only sees Younghyun cross the front door frame, throws his arms over Sungjin’s shoulders before leaning in to stop, hardly a breath’s apart.

Younghyun is speaking now only with his eyes and deep expressions and all Sungjin can think to bite out weakly is “I hurt you.”

“Don’t do it again.”

But he still doesn’t cross the distance, Sungjin knows it means that he still has something to say. So he waits, and waits like he has since seven years ago. In the same spot.

“I-I’m sorry I didn’t take my mask off for you.” Younghyun’s voice is trembling, from the restraint or emotions, or something else. “I froze, I-”

Sungjin tilts his head to the side, leaning forward until he can count each thin eyelash along Younghyun’s eyes.

“I would never ask you to do that for me,” Sungjin whispers, means it. Means it all and more. “I should’ve done that a long time ago...” and all the rest is lost as Younghyun leans the rest of the way, leaving nothing left between them.

Sungjin realizes that he had not forgotten how Younghyun likes to be kissed, gently but thoroughly, remembers exactly how to lick against his tongue and nipping at his bottom lip to produce the tenderest moans. 

So he does.

The noise of the cheering audiences echoes around him now, rising from his memories, roaring into one victorious sound in his ears and veins.

Sungjin is certain that his heart does something similar.

 

 

(“ _Thank you for taking your mask off for me.”_

 _“I’m proud of you, for achieving your dream. It’s time I put you before mine._ ”)

 

* * *

 

They take it slow.

Sungjin doesn’t sign with Seven Wings and Younghyun does instead. In six months, Sungjin still works for the accounting company but gets promoted and Younghyun records a full album while doing private lessons on the side. In a year, Sungjin moves out of the house with Wonpil and Younghyun moves in with him.

It’s nothing like the dream house they had once set eyes on, but they both pay for it with Sungjin’s savings and Younghyun’s competition winnings. It’s nothing like the apartment where they once shared an unbalanced life together, but it’s no longer haunted, still everything they ever wanted and better. Because it’s _theirs_.

When Younghyun finally convinces Sungjin to play the melodies, it’s on the electric keyboard in his room that their friends gifted them with (they say it’s to celebrate Younghyun’s win, but they all know it’s more than that).

Younghyun makes no noise throughout the small performance, but the silence seems especially loud in the small space, so Sungjin looks to the bed where Younghyun is perched. Isn’t prepared to see Younghyun looking at him with this devastating expression before falling back against the rush of blankets, grabbing Sungjin by the t-shirt collar down with him.

It’s the first thing they don’t take slow. Sungjin kisses him hard into the mattress like he’s trying to cram all the lost years into each and every touch, Younghyun kisses him back like he is too. It’s a rapid descent into mindlessness, just combinations of skin and lips against each other, moans, laughter, the sensation of soaring. 

The image of Younghyun, his head thrown back, long column of marked neck exposed, vibrant skin. His voice vibrating out in a way that Sungjin can, will never be able to translate to music.

Even after all of this time, Younghyun always leaves Sungjin feeling full of light. When he sings – they sing, _together_ – the soaring in his stomach, the thought that, at any moment, the notes are just going to swoop and carry them away. 

Sometimes Younghyun reaches out, a continuous muscle memory, touches the scar at the older’s cheek and Sungjin lets him. Rests his own hand over the younger’s, kisses him minty soft, and says, honestly, “Doesn’t hurt anymore.”

All the same thing he feels so deeply when he looks at Younghyun.

 

* * *

 

Sunjin blinks awake now, raising an arm to shield his eyes from the early sun. They’re in bed together and Younghyun’s arm is heavy as it rests across his stomach where his T-shirt had ridden up. 

Before Sungjin can settle to watch that broad chest rise and fall rhythmically, Younghyun shifts in his sleep and tugs him closer, making the latter laugh quietly when his nose and forehead bumps against the younger’s. 

“Let’s live here,” Younghyun murmurs, almost indistinguishable, his eyelids still heavy with sleep. “Don’t want to be sad anymore...”

It’s laughable, they own this house now, but Sungjin knows. 

So he doesn’t laugh and just says, “Yes, let’s. We don’t have to be sad about places anymore.” He understands what this means for him. Wants it all and more for Younghyun – for _them_ – and means it.

Pressing a delicate affirmation that he never tires of repeating despite the hundreds of times they’ve both shared it, Sungjin closes his eyes again, hardly hearing the statement returned again like an echo because he already knows it in his heart. He just breathes Younghyun in, falls into the white. 

The endless, blinding light of days passing by, just vast stretches of warm infinity that always begins and ends with each other’s lips.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Prompt:**  
>   
> 
> sungbri are in a show like american idol and have a rivalry going on and there's a pair challenge and the audience paired them together and now they have to chose and sing a song together (preferably a love song but can be any song!)
> 
> A/N: I literally wrote 62% of this 4hrs before it's due after a full day of work and delirious, then finished it later. you can tell which parts I wrote first hA, but thank you so much for the prompt OP, thank you mods for hosting this, and thank you dear reader for getting to the end of this mess! <3 <3 <3


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